The WiC rankings: Every single Star Trek show ranked worst to best

9. Star Trek: Enterprise, 2001 – 2005

Star Trek: Enterprise is what I like to call a “sausage factory show,” as in “you don’t want to know how the sausage is made.” Enterprise’s problem is that all the behind-the-scenes uncertainty and compromised decisions that went into making it are apparent in the finished product. No one knows whether or not a show is going to be a hit when it begins production, but good shows still give the impression that everyone involved knows what they’re doing.

To be fair, Enterprise was saddled with the impossible contradictory mandates of taking the franchise in a new and different direction while also not scaring off fans by being too new and different. This resulted in some weird choices, such as infamously breaking from the tradition of orchestral theme music and dropping “Star Trek” from the title while still sticking slavishly to the alien-of-the-week format.

This continued until the third season, when Enterprise was retooled; the name was changed to Star Trek: Enterprise and the show started incorporating longer story arcs. Bizarrely, this involved dropping the main bad guys and replacing them with another set of bad guys who had almost the exact same backstory.

The show was retooled again for season 4. It was cancelled halfway through that season, and the producers had to tack on a quickly cobbled-together finale that belongs neatly in the top five worst episodes of Star Trek ever.

Some people say Enterprise was beginning to hit its stride in season 4, but I disagree. Season 4 had some cracking stories, but that season 3 arc was really good too, and the AOTW seasons had some really great moments, as well. Enterprise also had the best pilot of any Star Trek show until Strange New Worlds came along. It was a good show all the way through, but even in season 4, it was never consistent. Every series has one or two notoriously terrible episodes, but Enterprise had several.